Assassin’s Creed – Where we limit ourselves by history in order to completely butcher it anyway.
I’m not going to play ‘spot the paradox.’ It’s not the first time something meant to be profound ends up being completely inane and devoid of any meaning. Words have been written on the famous ‘Only a Sith deals in absolutes’ and I have no intention on delving into how these slight slips of the writer’s pen undermines their goals. I’m of the opinion that, if you can’t get profundity, you’re better off shooting for clarity. Otherwise you end up with such delightful gems like Assassin’s Creed II’s motto of ‘Nothing is true and everything is permitted.’
Now, I know that there’s an in-game explanation for that silly expression. And it’s true that Assassin’s Creed is a franchise that already starts on shaky ground. For a brief summary: Assassin’s Creed (AC) is a hybrid stealth and platforming game that follows a secret sect of assassin’s as they navigate historical events and cities trying to stop a secret organization from… doing… stuff.
I’m going to be completely honest, I’ve played the original and almost thirty hours of the sequel and I can say I have very little idea of what is going on. Some of that is due to laziness since details of the plot are revealed through exploring the cities and hunting down collectibles. While I enjoy the free-roaming/parkour system they developed for the game, collectible hunting doesn’t actually turn my crank and ends up generally being a large time sink with little payoff. However, the other reason I fail to follow the plot of this series is because it makes almost zero sense.
Point of discussion – http://youtu.be/hrz044bM_RE?t=5m30s
So let’s jump right into it. My first issue is this scene in the final half of the game. It’s the moment that all is revealed to Ezio about the Assassin Order and the secret motives of the Templar. It’s a rather tricky situation, as you are required to relay information to a character that the player is wholly aware of from almost twenty hours earlier. What’s really bizarre about this point is both its execution and it’s timing. First, it comes so incredibly late that it feels almost like an afterthought. It’s like the developers realized right before the finale that they never actually informed Ezio who he was actually working for. It’s a scene that feels it should have been performed much earlier. But what I found more bewildering is the complete fumbling of this encounter.
It’s obviously meant to be a grand reunion of all the characters and a twist reveal that all of Ezio’s friends have really been fellow assassins this whole time. Course, it makes you wonder why you were sent to do all the killing when Venice has no less then three full member Assassins stationed there and Ezio still hasn’t officially been welcomed into the ranks. I like this scene because it highlights the amateur attempt for cinematic flair for a complete disregard for the verisimilitude of the world. It’s been well established at this point that the Assassins are on the losing side of this war. The Templars are always better organized, connected and armed. And here, at the moment when they are known to be bringing in one of the most dangerous objects known to the Assassin Order, they all decide to randomly reveal themselves to the only identified Templar? And they just rush head long into a fight with him without attempting to set up a blockade or corner the man responsible for so much turmoil over the entire game?
This isn’t just blind foolishness but utter suicide. The game itself says that the Assassin’s greatest weapon is their anonymity and now their chief rival knows who they all are. None of them even have the decency to try and arrive masked! Even Ezio had the foresight to throw on a guard uniform. Ok, strike one for this scene. But wait, why are all these people here in the first place? I can’t even tell you who some of them are because their relevance to the story is so inconsequential. Why are the few Assassin’s no name leaders of street ruffians? Half of these characters don’t even live in Venice so either they all got the memo that Ezio’s surprise party was being held that night or they just showed up because they were needed to leap senseless to their deaths from the campanile at the end.
But my favourite part is when Machiavelli says, ‘the prophecy foretold that the prophet would come and it was you, Ezio, that arrived.’ Apparently, these characters are so profoundly shocked to learn that Ezio arrived at this midnight rendezvous even though they were the ones that arranged the meeting for him in the first place! Considering how Ezio has been a rather faithful lapdog this entire time, it shouldn’t really be shocking that he followed orders and came to this spot just like he was instructed. Course, these are the same people that took a year to find a shipping manifest from the warehouses they captured in the prior act so perhaps insight isn’t their strongest characteristic.
So, let’s ignore these piling issues and forgive the Assassins (whose sole activity is assassinations yet the Spaniard runs off rather effortlessly despite all of them being present) and examine this scene further. Ezio arrives in disguise to deliver the MacGuffin of great importance to the villain and though the Spaniard manages to sneak off, the first thing the Assassins do is not secure this device that apparently has the power to destroy the world but instead climb the largest tower in the city in order to fake brand Ezio’s finger before swan diving into the city’s smallest pile of hay. While I’m sure this scene was meant to be awe-inspiring, what it actually did was lend a real world explanation to a strict game play mechanic. In having every character Lara Croft into St. Marco’s Square, the game has now established that every Assassin possesses the super power to lock on to the nearest haystack and defy even the simplest physics without so much as a sprained ankle. For a game trying so desperately to ground itself in reality, this is one of those moments that completely shatters a person’s suspension of disbelief. The ‘leap of faith’ (as the game describes this action) is easily understood by the player as a mechanic of convenience. As the game encourages players to human fly up the largest buildings, the designers rightly assumed that once scaling the precious landmarks, players wouldn’t want to turn around and slowly descend the way they came. Having a quick jump to return to the ground saved time and was an easy reward for the player’s hard work. It was something that never needed grounding in the game’s world because it never served a real purpose in that world.
And in a game that’s trying so desperately hard to make a grand conspiracy involving every known historical event play into this grandiose struggle between two fictitious secret societies, they need as much help in maintaining that suspension of disbelief that they can get. But this isn’t the only time these characters actions don’t make sense with their motivations. Acquiring the MacGuffin was one of the most important motives of their Order but… you know… it’s okay to put that off and not worry about securing it because we have a hazing ritual to complete first for a guy that’s essentially been part of our order for almost ten years now.
However, character motivations and beliefs are a pretty universal problem for this game. I’m going to pull a Derek and leave the second part of my rant for another day where I discover that characters aren’t treated as living people but as vehicles for ham-fisting the most hypocritical heavy handed themes I’ve seen all month. Hopefully I can retain my fury to remember all of these grievances.